Dries Buytaert

I enjoyed reading Vitalik's 2020 endnotes. Vitalik is one of the founders of Ethereum, and one of the most interesting people in the world to follow right now.

Like Vitalik, I'm interested in economic systems, multi-stakeholder coordination, and public good governance and sustainability. How do we create Open Source communities that will thrive for hundreds of years to come? How do we make sure the Open Web is still thriving in a thousand years? These are some of the questions I think about.

While I think about these things, Vitalik is making it happen. The blockchain world is experimenting with new funding models (e.g. ICOs, DAICOs or quadratic funding), decision-making models (e.g. quadratic voting), organizational models (e.g. DAOs), and architectural innovation (e.g. Filecoin or Blockstack).

The blockchain allows these concepts to be implemented in a robust and secure way. Eventually, they could be used to help sustain and govern public goods like Open Source projects and the Open Web.

But it's not just Open Source or the Open Web that should be considered. Some of the very biggest problems in the world (for example, climate change) are multi-stakeholder problems that require better funding, coordination and decision-making models too.

So, yes, these are important developments to pay attention to!